WATCH OUT FOR . . .

 
WATCH OUT FOR WHO IS WATCHING OUT FOR YOU
If You Don’t Care if The Government Snoops Around Without Telling You, Don’t Read Any Further.  You are probably one of those few people who never feel intruded upon when people run through your private things either.  Given free rein to roam wherever they want, such people rarely clean up after themselves.  They can also make a mess of people’s lives.

NY TIMES: The Bush administration and Senate Republican leaders are pushing a plan that would significantly expand the F.B.I.'s power to demand business records in terror investigations without obtaining approval from a judge, officials said on Wednesday.

The proposal, which is likely to be considered next week in a closed session of the Senate intelligence committee, would allow federal investigators to subpoena records from businesses and other institutions without a judge's sign-off if they declared that the material was needed as part of a foreign intelligence investigation.

The Heretik is concerned about this and you should be too, no matter your political stripe, red or blue. People who work in the name of intelligence are not uniformly bright.  Some in fact are downright stupid.  I do not trust the stupid who demand “intelligence”  from me when they have so little of their own.  If recent events have taught us anything, intelligence is often used by the ignorant for ignoble ends.  And if there is one thing I have learned in life, the last person you want to trust is the the person who says, Trust me.  People hide behind the line Trust Me all the time. Trust must be earned.  You can take that to the judge.

If This Concerns You, Contact Your Senator or Select Committee on Intelligence Members:

Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), chairman

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), ranking minority member

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)   
Senator Mike Dewine (R-Ohio)
Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri)   
Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi)
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)   
Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska)
Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan)   
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)   
Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana)
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland)  
Senator Jon Corzine (D-New Jersey)


QUESTION :  What would you be willing to give up to be more secure? If someone else wants to give up their rights to privacy, do you  have to go along?
 

MORE ON THIS FROM TALK LEFT: The folks who brought us the Patriot Act assure us that the proposed side-stepping of judicial review is nothing to worry about. In fact, they can't think of a "coherent argument" against it . . . .The government usually has little difficulty persuading a judge to order the production of documents, but even that limited check on unfettered power is too much to bear for the Bush administration.

WATCH OUT
for how people watching out for you don't want you to look at how they do things!  Secrecy is Often a Sign of Guilt in an individual.  It is also often a sign that what a government wants to do is not so innocent.

ACLU:The Senate Intelligence Committee announced today that it is rushing forward with a markup of Patriot Act reauthorization legislation Thursday, but that the session will be behind closed doors.

Some of the most extreme parts of the Patriot Act are set to sunset, or expire, at the end of this year unless Congress reauthorizes them. When lawmakers passed the Patriot Act just 45 days after 9/11, they included these sunsets because they knew that some provisions shouldn’t be made permanent. The committee will be reviewing legislation involving the sunsets and other key parts of the Patriot Act that impact civil liberties.

Members of Congress have until the end of the year to review and modify the Patriot Act, but some lawmakers hope to steamroll the entire process through Congress in the next few weeks. This closed-door markup is an indication that some in Congress are trying to rush through legislation, and keep the public in the dark.


OTHER PRIVACY ISSUES
Juli at Idllopus has news on a new invention coming soon to an airport near you

Comments

[Steve Bates]

If You Don’t Care if The Government Snoops Around Without Telling You, Don’t Read Any Further. You are probably one of those few people who never feel intruded upon when people run through your private things either. - The Heretik

Not to worry, Heretik. I'm not one of those people. Excellent post, by the way, and thanks for the links to others.

It is precisely because I have nothing to hide that I refuse to be "routinely" searched, without probable cause, without a warrant obtained from a court. Privacy is distinct from secrecy, and whatever the wingnuts may say, the Fourth Amendment does, indeed, contain an effective right to privacy, a right to be left alone, as Justice Brandeis put it. IMHO, the proposed extensions of the already largely unconstitutional PATRIOT Act are even more grossly unconstitutional.

[blogtopus]

I read that this technology shows the outline of skin only, and then only the obvious layers, meaning men and women with large breasts and obese people can still hide these objects on their person. I can see it now: All fat people will be labeled terrorist sympathizers.

And they still won't get an extra seat in the airplane.

[Treban]

Pound another nail in America's coffin. I go home to weep now.

[Pepper]

"People who work in the name of intelligence are not uniformly bright. Some in fact are downright stupid."

Aye-aye to that, Heretik! These "smooth movers" are so good at snooping through people's stuff and determining who is "dangerous" or not that they put my parents on a watch list! One day, they show up at the airport, all ready for a nice little vay-cay in Tampa, and they get the evil eye from the TSA.

And these aren't ex-hippie Weathermen or anything - these are white, cuddly, fiftysomething folks who are American-born and Republican voters. How they landed on the terror watch list is beyond me. I'm starting to think some drunk mother is playing "eenie-meenie-meinie-mo" with the lsit of passengers on flights! So NO, I don't want these Masters of Intelligence gaining any more power than they already have!

[Gotham Image]

Heritik- I know you agree with me that they have ulterior motives- they want this expanded for reasons to do with social control and power. Many many many non terrorist connect crimes have been prosecuted with the Patriot Act, but very little regarding terrorism. That was intentional